I rarely speak about my childhood or private life. & by rarely, I mean never, unless it's the nice stuff. I guess that ends today.
I was born & raised in & around Los Angeles. My parents were pregnant before graduating high school with my older sister. 15 months later, I was born. The family was all-American, all-military. Air Force. Dad worked for his dad in a print shop. Mom worked in a nail & hair salon. They offered us the best they could. I learned at a young age what bankruptcy was, & the impact it had on adults who were struggling to keep their heads above water.
My earliest memory is walking out of our apartment in Canoga Park to find my mom's car up on blocks because someone stole the wheels & tires off her little Mazda. I think I was around 3. Years later, I was still squeezing my now-6-foot-tall self into the back seat of that car. There was a lot of violence & crime in Canoga Park.
But that was child's play, & nothing compared to the violence in my home.
Until I was nearly 11, my father was an uncontrollable force of violent rage. The kind that results from a severe chemical imbalance, not the alcoholic kind--I've seen alcohol pass my dad's lips maybe 3 times in my whole life. He never touched the stuff. Never touched drugs. Never even smoked a cigarette. He was a gym rat, & an enormous man. Lucky for me, though his massive hands were rarely quiet, I was not the target. My mother, on the other hand, learned to take her hits well--both from life & from him.
My earliest memory of a firearm was the one I saw my father point into my mother's face. I was about 5. We'd just moved into a new home they had built. My sister & I watched in horror from the hallway as he pressed the muzzle into her face. My sister, just 6 years old, ran into the room & began yelling at him to stop. Terrified, I hid behind one of those tall floor speakers that were so the rage at that time. Shaking uncontrollably, I couldn't help but peek out from behind the speaker, just waiting for the gun to go off. Words I do not recall were yelled at my sister, & she went scurrying back down the hallway. She & I were like twins. & twins stick together. I overcame my petrifying fear & ran back down the hallway after her. We went to my room. She was never very good at thinking through anything--still isn't. She was unbelievably good at simply acting with no thought of consequences. I, however, was always the thinker. Hiding in my room with my sister, away from the horror unfolding in living room, I was able to think. We grabbed my [other] infant sister, & I kicked screen out of my bedroom window--oh, praise the southern Californian ranch-style, single-level homes!--so we could escape the house. We ran from the house, trying to find a neighbor with a phone. We hadn't really learned about 911 as I recall, or perhaps we were just scared to fucking death, & couldn't recall the digits. My sister & I discussed how we needed to call my uncle, the only other bodybuilding man we knew who was even bigger & stronger than our massive dad. But we did not know his phone number. At this point, my memory gets pretty hazy. I cannot for the life of me remember how we wound up back inside the house. But we did. My mother somehow talked my father into leaving the house--and the gun. While he was gone, we rode with her in that shitty little Mazda some distance away. We thought we were leaving--it would have probably been the dozenth time I could remember. I realized we weren't when my mother pulled up to a dumpster behind a store, & I watched her throw the gun inside. She was, of course, punished pretty severely when my father found out.
From age 5 to 10, living in that house my parents built that my father so routinely did his best to destroy, my father worked in the valley. He would stay close to work Mon-Thur, & only come home Fridays for the weekend. So, it was basically 5 years of 4 days of peace with a mother who grew increasingly hardened, & a father who'd come home just as we were all feeling relaxed to fuck that all up for 2 days & 3 nights. Of course, I never had the slightest idea that in many ways, he simply couldn't help it--and please don't misunderstand that statement as being any kind of excuse for his behavior.
When I was 10, in the 7th grade--I skipped from 3rd to 5th grade--we moved to a new house. I began to learn very quickly about gangs. I knew kids with guns at school. Kids had no shoes because they'd been stolen while walking to school that morning. Same with jackets in the winters. I learned to identify the kids in my schools who were involved in gangs. I learned how to keep my ears open & pay attention to what was around me. I still got the shit beat out of me from time to time. I learned not to be afraid of any single one of these fuckers, & they knew they had to knock me out to shut me up because I wasn't going to back down just because some punk or bully was wearing colors. I also learned about crooked cops. They were everywhere. Oh, there were definitely some good ones to be found. But at 35, I still eye every cop with suspicion. I can't recall a time since I was about 8 that I felt police were a friend of the community.
With a military family, it was inevitable I would learn to fire guns. Everyone in the family had them. I learned to take them apart, clean them, & rebuild them by the time I was 10. I began shooting them when I was about 12. I've fired many. I don't own a single one, & I probably never will. First impressions stick harder than anything else.
It was during this time my father swallowed a bottle of pills. He'd apparently had enough of himself & couldn't cope anymore. The pills were supposed to help him somehow find balance. Instead, they drove him way over the edge into what I assume he thought would be the eternal arms of endless rest.
He failed. I was made to visit him in the hospital. My mom brought my sisters & I to see him and, sitting in a cold room at a table, I saw my father cry for the first time. I hated him for it, & refused to allow him any of my sympathy. I became a little terror for a while. I kind of checked out emotionally & mentally. School, which had always been an effortless straight-A achievement, took a nose-dive. Suspensions. Cut classes. I'd leave school part way through the day & walk miles back home, coordinating my arrival with when the buses dropped my sisters off.
As my 11th birthday approached, I recall a clear, radical thought: I simply couldn't keep looking to my parents for answers. They were a fucking mess, & barely able to take care of themselves. If I was going to figure out how to navigate life & the world around me, how to not let my life so far have any chance at fucking me up, I was going to have to start tackling it on my own. So, that's what I did. I started reading everything I could get my hands on. The Bible. History. Science. Math. Literature. Philosophy. I began to learn the contours of what I could get away with, & what would make my parents' eyebrows raise. I was looking for something, anything tied to something stronger that could pull me ashore. I found that in knowledge, education, studying, questioning everything I was told, interrogating everything--including myself--to discover just what it was made of.
When I was 17 & learning how to drive, my dad told me he was proud of me for the first time I could recall. Like, a genuine moment I could tell he was facing the fact that I'd just told him & my mom I couldn't stay at home anymore & had to go. I nearly drove the car off the road as, for the first time in 6 years, I teared up & began crying. We were both choked up, & I tried--as I usually do in difficult situations--to lighten the mood by joking that was one hell of a way to risk our lives.
That bottle of pills was my dad's salvation. He was never the same after that. He never raised his hands again. He was transformed. He's such a different person in many ways today because of that moment. I'm proud of him for eventually finding a way out of the darkness. Sadly, he's never been able to forgive himself, even though my sisters & I most certainly have. Some years after my sister & I moved out of the house, my mom told me that he spent almost every night of that first year we were gone crying himself to sleep. In his mind, he's never really stopped being that monster he was before he tried to die.
That bottle of pills was my salvation. I was never the same after that.
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So, random internet stranger, I am not the product of an extraordinarily privileged life. Except that I was born white. & male. & had a computer at 8, which was the luckiest break I ever had (after being white & male). I never thought growing up that I would ever make it to being 20 years old.
And no, random internet stranger, what I said was neither naive nor paternalistic. Nor is it borne of some sociopathic level of delusion. That you are offended by someone taking a strong stance against violence of all forms is for you to own. We don't have to agree, but please do yourself & everyone else a great favor by not thinking you could possibly ever definitively & accurately intuit someone's personal background on the basis of their comments & the positions they take on things.
I recognize precisely where my privilege lies. I have long known of its existence, before it even became popular to talk about privilege. That you imagine a life of posh privilege as being the life that would cause a person to take a firm position on something shows only a gaping lack of imagination on your part.